Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a philosophical system that was developed by German Edmund Husserl against the background of what Husserl perceived as the degenerate state of twentieth century philosophy. Philosophers were divided into two camps. On the one hand, there were empiricists who were obsessed with concrete facts and refused to acknowledge any universal truths. On the other, there were the subjectivists who denied any notion of objective truth and subordinated everything to fleeting personal experience. Phenomenology, conversely, promised to provide a firm basis on which all other truths could rest upon.

Phenomenology did not begin with the assumption that objects exist as they are perceived, or even that they exist at all. Rather, phenomenology focused exclusively on the experiences of perception itself, what it called the "phenomena". Through careful contemplation and study of these phenomena, one could come to perceive their universal essences—those characteristics which were...